I remember asking during the groundschool for my second commercial aircraft type: “excuse me, what is a flight director?”. I had spent a year flying my first commercial aircraft type which had no flight director, so we thought they were talking about the person who sat in Flight Ops !!
I suppose that if you have flown commercially without a F/D, it is second nature to ignore it when necessary and concentrate on the pitch and roll. However, if you have only ever had a F/D on all the time, it must be difficult to ignore it.
Maybe we now have ‘children of the flight director’? (and I don’t mean that in an unkind way.)
PS, it is not hard to ask PM for “flight directors off” in an Airbus as you are disconnecting the autopilot, ready for a TCAS RA. As well as removing incorrect directions, this also forces the A/THR to SPEED, as has been noted, which protects your flight path.